BOOK REVIEWS
113
African American Actresses:
The Struggle for Visibility
Charlene Regester
Indiana University Press, 2010
African American Actresses: The Struggle for Visibility by Charlene
Regester focuses on the lives and careers of nine black female actresses of note,
from Sul-Te-Wan of The Birth o f a Nation to Dorothy Dandridge of Porgy and
Bess fame. Regester’s study closely examines not only the lives and careers of
these African American actresses, but also examines how the American media—
both mainstream and African American—addressed the roles, private lives, and
controversies these surrounding these women. Within the introduction, Regester
discusses the multiple challenges facing African American actresses during the
first half of the 20^^ century, as well as the reasons for studying these particular
nine actresses within the study. Additionally, she discusses the concepts of
“Other” and “shadow” with respect to the marginalization these women
experienced and against which they fought throughout their lives and careers.
In a roughly chronological study, Regester begins with Madame Sul-TeWan, the actress whose first screen role was in D.W. Griffith’s The Birth o f a
Nation. Regester’s discussion of the career of Sul-Te-Wan, illustrates how, in
spite of her “invisibility” in films such as The Birth o f a Nation and King Kong,
Sul-Te-Wan was able to negate the invisibility of her subservient roles, by
making herself “visible” through her talent, thus sustaining a long career. The
chapter on Nina Mae McKinney, the first black actress to have a leading role in
a mainstream film, the all-black cast film. Hallelujah (1929) discusses how
McKinney, like several actresses in this study, began her career as a stage
performer, in this case, a dancer. Regester also discusses the racism which
McKinney experienced during the filming of Hallelujah, the role for which she
is best known. Within this chapter, Regester also shows how McKinney, like
several of the actresses in this study, was frustrated by Hollywood’s racism and
died in relative obscurity. The chapter on Louise Beavers, subtitled “Negotiating
Racial Difference,” discusses the actress most famous for her role as Delilah in
Imitati on o f Life (1934), in which she essentially plays a “mammy.” However,
Regester contends, in spite of this and other stereotypical roles, Beavers
publically resisted “the subservience she endured on screen” (102) and “used her
acting talent to lessen the marginalization that came with her screen roles”
(106). In the chapter devoted to career and life of Fredi Washington, whose most
notable role was as Pecola, the daughter of Delilah in Imitation o f Life, Regester
examines the life of a black actress who was able to successfully negotiate the
“masquerades and masks” of Hollywood. As a “white mulatto,” Washington
could pass for white; indeed, with respect to her physiology, Washington “wore